


The Sight of Blind Eyes

by crazinaway



Category: Glee
Genre: Facebook, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazinaway/pseuds/crazinaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sees Kurt Hummel’s new friendship notice in the fall, and sees his engagement announcement in the summer, two years later. There’s a long road between the two, but fortunately, she’s lucky enough to be a stranger who witnessed every step.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sight of Blind Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired entirely and completely by [this](http://crazinaway.tumblr.com/post/68680740797/) gifset, and vosje’s tag, _‘god their facebook-status must be a mess’_. Thank you for the inspiration for this.

_Kurt Hummel_ is now friends with _Blaine Anderson_ and _2 other people_.

 

*

 

If she’s being truly honest with herself, prior to November of 2010, Gwen has never paid much thought to one Kurt Hummel.

She’s seen him in the halls, of course, because it’s usually incredibly hard to miss him when he walks by you -- and if she really thinks about it, they might share a class or two.  But further than that, Kurt is about as part of her social-circle as any of his club-members are; which, truthfully, is not at all.

The only time she can recall speaking to him in person is the third day of freshman year, after he sat two chairs away from her in one of the orientation classes and she asked him if he knew the way to the history classroom. He told her that he didn’t, and she thanked him and walked away, never crossing paths with him the same way again.

But now, sitting crossed-legged on her bed with a bowl of chips by her side and her laptop perched carefully on her lap, Gwen is staring at a post on her Facebook newsfeed, and finds herself inexplicably intrigued.

Maybe it’s the fact that she’s never seen him interact with anyone but his friends from the Glee-club, she reasons, staring at the post and ignoring her friend babbling about the last episode of _The Vampire Diaries_ in the chat. Maybe it’s because Lima is a tiny town, and everyone go to same school, and everyone knows _everyone_ \-- and she knows for a fact that Blaine Anderson does not go to their school, or lives in their town, for that matter. Maybe it’s just because Kurt Hummel has never struck her as a friendly type, and seeing the proof that he’s able to make friends out of the school’s comfort-zone is bewildering -- but then again, she supposes, for someone like Kurt, outside of the school’s comfort-zone is probably best.

Finding peace with her reasoning and absently noting to herself that Kurt Hummel’s new friend is pleasingly attractive if judging by his profile picture -- in that prep-school boy kind of way -- Gwen scrolls past the friendship notice and regains interest in the discussion concerning the dress Elena wore to the Homecoming dance.

 

*

 

The next time Gwen thinks about Kurt Hummel is through much more conventional meanings, and concerning a much graver situation.

There are five minutes before her first class begins, and she’s already set her bag on the desk and sat down in her usual seat, next to where her best friend usually sits. But Abbie texted her that she’s down with the flu and won’t be able to make it, and so the seat next to her is open for the taker -- which happens to be Joe, a girl with vibrant energy and a gossiping-tendency.

Because of that, Gwen is hardly surprised when Joe doesn’t wait a second before hopping onto the desk and leaning down towards her, whispering, “Have you heard Kurt Hummel switched schools?”

Gwen looks up from the screen of her phone and blinks at Joe, wordlessly asking for more details.

“I heard Principal Figgins talking to Mr. Schue about it in the hall -- s’not official, but everyone knows he transferred ‘cause the football team was giving him a hard time.”

 _Hard time_. Gwen isn’t exactly a gay-rights activist or an opinionated person in general, but she wonders what counts as a sufficient reason to switch schools, if being harassed on a daily basis no longer cuts it.

“Where did he go?” she asks instead, because in the end of the day it’s not really any of her business, and it’s not really any of Joe’s, either, so correcting her or not correcting her will end in the same result as it is.

“I don’t really know. They said something about a private school, but -- well, how many private schools are there in the area? I know there aren’t any in Lima, so he must’ve gone pretty far.”

Gwen nods, mutely, and Joe shrugs. She taps her fingers once on the wood of the desk then climbs off of it, and, with a wave, walks away to most likely find someone else willing to listen to the latest news.

Gwen is left staring at the screen of her phone with unfocused eyes, and for the first time ever, truly wondering about the severity of the bullying the unpopular members of the school go through. What do they _do_ to them, that could cause someone to pack up their things and go so far away from home, just to avoid seeing these people?

 

*

 

February finds Gwen sitting tucked away in a corner of the local restaurant, Breadstix, surrounded by two of her best friends and a sobbing third.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and so it’s only fitting that at least one person would get their heart broken -- and it just so happens that Bradley is that person, finally dumping the ass she used to date and dragging her friends to drown her sorrows in a chocolate cake and warm, comforting arms. They aren’t paying attention to the other patrons -- Abbie pushed them towards the most faraway table after she claimed to see, “ _Far too many members of the school’s Glee-club to sit in the front_ ,” -- but it’s when someone taps on a microphone that the girls look up, suddenly noticing a large group of uniformed boys alongside the Glee-club members.

The person is Kurt Hummel, and he looks healthier than when she last saw him, stands taller and looks braver. She can’t put her finger on it, but he doesn’t look entirely _happy_ \-- and from what she knows of him, she can’t quite see him fitting in with these clean-cut boys and their matching uniforms. But he’s certainly trying, and being safe is probably more important to him than his wardrobe, in the end.

The choir’s song is fun and upbeat, and by the end the girls are clapping along with the Glee-club members who are there to support Kurt. By her side, her friends are laughing and jokingly encouraging Bradley to find herself a rebound from one of the private-school boys, but Gwen is only half-listening. Her eyes are following Kurt Hummel as he steps off the stage, pressed by the side to the boy who sang lead.

It’s only by chance that she hears his name -- the pair is talking to Brittany, one of the Cheerios who joined the Glee-club, and the tables in the room are so close-together that she can hear most of their conversation over the noise, can catch Brittany’s half-logical sentence and the boy’s name, a clear _Blaine_ followed by a nickname Gwen doesn’t even attempt to understand.

But she remembers, even though it was four months ago, remembers the time she sat on her bed and stared at Kurt Hummel’s new friend notice and wondered who that person was.

Now, she looks at the way Kurt laughs at something Blaine said, looks at Blaine touching Kurt’s hand every few moments, watches the way they look at each other and thinks of the last few scenes in a movie before the lead couple finally kisses, how they stare at each other in silence and how the energy buzzes between them, visible to the viewer.

Gwen looks away from the boys and catches up on her own table’s conversation. If every time she sees Kurt on her Facebook newsfeed for the next couple of weeks she clicks on his profile, just to check that his relationship status hasn’t changed -- well. Then she just ends up disappointed, because it doesn’t.

Not until the middle of March, at least.

 

*

 

 _Kurt Hummel_ is in a relationship with _Blaine Anderson_.

            _Mercedes Jones_ and _24 others_ like this.

            _View all 31 comments_.

 

*

 

It’s by pure luck and nothing else that Gwen happens to observe Kurt’s change of relationship status right in front of her, and not just virtually, on her computer screen.

It’s March in Ohio, so she’s buried under layers of coats and scarves and woolen-hats with her eyes and frozen, red nose peeking from between them. She’s sitting inside the coffee-shop and the heating is obviously on, but she’s never been a winter girl -- doesn’t like cold or wind, and can only stand snow when in front of a warm fireplace and with thick walls separating her and the outside. She wasn’t at all enthusiastic about going outside, but she has papers to hand over and four screaming siblings at home, so driving to the Lima Bean and getting her work done there seemed like the best solution.

Now, with her head leaning on her palm and her finger scrolling down her newsfeed, she wonders what made her think she’d ever get this done in time.

She’s been sitting there half an hour and her cup is nearly empty when the door to the shop is pushed open, and she looks up because of pure instinct -- and is taken by surprise when she recognizes the pair entering the door. Two boys, in navy uniform and red cheeks -- scarves wrapped around their necks and their mouths quirked in sunny grins that don’t match the weather, but match the way their hands are clasped together tightly, dangling between their bodies.

She looks away quickly, eyes darting back to her laptop screen, because staring is rude -- but also because even her bare interaction with Kurt Hummel tells her that if they caught her staring, they’d pull their hands away immediately, and she doesn’t want to make them do that. 

She can hear them ordering at the counter, and she tries to make herself stop listening, tries to squish her irrational curiosity -- but she can’t, and the last thing she wants is to interrupt  what appears to be one of the first dates of their relationships, so she chooses the alternative. Her pointer slides towards the search bar and she types Kurt’s name quickly, clicking on his profile and looking for his relationship information.

She’s not at all surprised but a little bit pleased when it states there, black and blue on white, that Kurt has been dating Blaine Anderson for two weeks.

A small smile forms on her lips, a smile of smugness and satisfaction about being right at Breadstix all those weeks ago, and she lets herself look up at them one more time. They’re sitting down now, at a table for two by the door, both of them holding plastic cups in one of their hands -- but their free ones are on the table between them, holding each other while their eyes lock together.

Gwen shuts her laptop close and stands up, pushing it into her bag. She’s sure that her siblings will shut up if she promises them forbidden candy later on in the evening, and if not, she can always lock them in the basement. It’s not that big of a problem.

Her hands are deep in her pockets and her bag is thrown over her shoulder when she walks by Kurt and his boyfriend, and for the first time since that class in freshman year, their eyes meet each other.

She smiles politely at him, and pushes the coffee-shop’s door open.

 

*

 

When Gwen starts her senior year of high-school, she has several things on her mind. She wants to make sure her classes align so she has enough time for her horse-riding group, she wants to maybe get a tutor in algebra so she’d pass with good grades, and she wants to consult with Ms. Pillsbury about possible colleges for the following year.

What she doesn’t have on her mind, however, is Glee-club, or any of its members.

Seeing how she shares little to no classes with most of them, doesn’t participate in any clubs afterschool, and has no talent that involves music in any way whatsoever, Glee-club is something Gwen doesn’t think about very often. In fact, most of the times they perform for the student body she’s missing, and she only hears about it later from other students -- sometimes with a roll or an eye, sometimes with an amused smirk.

So it’s a new zone for her, trailing after the group of kids in the hall with hopes of catching sight of the members.

 It’s not that she suddenly developed an interest in music or singing, or even wants to talk to any of them -- it’s just that over lunch-break she watched a new Glee-club member perform in the courtyard with the Cheerios, and a piano burst on fire, and she’s almost certain that the new member is the boy she saw with Kurt in the Lima Bean last winter, the boy whose name is Blaine and who held Kurt’s hand fondly.

She would have been certain of it, too, if Finn Hudson wasn’t standing in the back of the group with his arm wrapped around his girlfriend, blocking any and all view of the other members.

Thankfully, the bell rings a moment later. The group breaks away, waving goodbye -- she can see two couples turning right and Artie Abrams wheeling left, the rest of them continuing down the hall for their next class -- but fate must be on Gwen’s side, because Kurt and the new member linger behind, leaning against the metal row of lockers and speaking in hushed voices.

It takes her between three to five seconds to realize that if she just remains standing there she’d make herself a reputation of gay-stalker in no time, so she ducks behind the next corner and fiddles with her cell-phone, trying to make her fake texting look as believable as it can.

A few feet away from her, the new member bursts into laughter about something Kurt said, and he leans his head back against the lockers in an angle that allows Gwen to see his face and determine that he is, in fact, the private-school boyfriend.

Hair gelled-back and clothes bright-colored, bowtie tied around his neck and his ankles bare -- but it’s him, no doubt, the same expressive, handsome face and big smile, looking much happier and much more comfortable in his own skin than she remembered him.

Curiosity settled, Gwen pockets her phone and makes her way to English class. She leaves the couple standing behind her, bodies pressed close and leaning towards each other.

 

*

 

 _Kurt Hummel_ is now single.

            _View all 14 comments_.

 

*

 

By the time graduation comes and goes, and so does the summer that follows it, Gwen -- and every other alumni of the 2012 class of McKinley High -- knows exactly who Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson are, and knows exactly how in love they are.

It’s not that they ever were affectionate in public, because they weren’t; and it’s not because the student body began to speak to the Glee-club more often than they had before, because they didn’t. It’s because it was high-school, and they’re teenagers, and it’s really hard to miss that one couple that sticks with each other through thick and thin, always standing by each other’s sides -- whether it’s metaphorically or physically.

Truthfully, Gwen still doesn’t know anything about them, after going to school with them for a full year. She knows their names and knows they both were, and are, in Glee-club. She knows they’ve been dating since junior year, and knows they’re still dating, even though Kurt moved to New York. She knows that they sing to each other, a lot, and that Blaine serenaded Kurt on the first week of his senior year because her little sister is a sophomore, and she sent her the video.

Despite that, she doesn’t know them, as people -- and it’s okay, because she’s in Chicago and they’re where they are, and they never really were part of her social-circle, to begin with.

But it stills touches something within her, something that wishes to remember high-school the way it was in its very last day, when she sees the change in Kurt’s relationship status in October.

She’s still Facebook-friends with all of her former peers, both because she doesn’t mind and because she doesn’t have the heart to cut herself off from her past -- but the most she’s seen of Kurt in the last few months is on Rachel Berry’s page, not on his, in pictures that are titled with _nyc day with the bff_ and _just watched a broadway show -- live!_.

It’s like a sad imitation of that day, two years ago, when she sat on the bed in her childhood room and saw Kurt’s new friend notice -- only now she’s sitting on the floor in her dorm room, and her roommate is talking on the phone a few feet away, and she has no food and Kurt Hummel broke up with the same new friend, the boy Gwen got to know a little last year and who she kind of thought would last at least a little longer.

Evidently, not everything is as it seems, she thinks, and pushes herself off the floor, laptop sliding to the side. It’s not really about Kurt and Blaine, but about what they represented -- stability, and the reality that she used to live in Lima, Ohio, and the memories of her senior year of high-school and everything that came with that.

Everything changes, she thinks, and she wonders if it means something that she heard that thought in her head through an old woman’s voice.

 

*

 

It’s November again when Gwen finds herself roaming the halls of McKinley High for the first time since graduation, Thanksgiving only two weeks away and the school-year in full swing. She knows she won’t be able to make it to Thanksgiving, with the amount of work she’s facing, so she made the trip a little early -- just in time to watch the McKinley annual show, which happens to be a remake of Grease that year.

The show was great, she has to admit -- she never paid much attention to the musical and dramatic talents of her own class, but now that most of the actors are no longer people she knows in person, she finds it easier to focus on the actual acting, the voices and scenes and chemistry. They’re good, in a way that is more than just _high-school level_ of good, and it makes her happy to sit in the audience, makes her feel like she’s home even though it no longer is.

But in old settings, old habits come back, and she stumbles into a familiar situation when she wants to cross the main hallway and refrains from doing so, catching sight of two boys talking in the middle of it.

They look -- older, is the word, and it should probably make them look better but they look so _tired_ , not physically but emotionally, pale and lifeless and _tired_. She does her best not to listen to their conversation, even though the hallway is quiet and their voices are somewhat loud -- because it feels different, looking at a fleeting scene of two boys in love, and barging into a discussion of two boys who look like they broke each other in the worst way possible.

She wonders what happened, for the shortest of moments. It’s only human nature, the desire to know -- and she still remembers their fingers laced together as they walked through the halls, remembers them sitting close together on the bench in the cafeteria, remembers hearing the ghost of their laugh as she passed by them in the halls. It hasn’t been that long ago, and she hasn’t seen them since -- so all she can remember of them is the way they were in love, and all she can think about is how different this is.

They look heartbroken, and she feels herself ache in sympathy, their pain a cruel reminder that not everything that appears golden will remain so forever.

She can see the silhouette of Rachel Berry from the other side of the hallway a second before she turns on her heels and walks away, her back turned to the scene she just witnessed. She lets go of her wonder and makes herself stop thinking about them, because this, more than anything she saw them do, feels too private for a stranger to witness.

 

*

 

 _Kurt Hummel_ \- with _Blaine Anderson_ and _Burt Hummel._

_So happy to have my dad and my best friend over for Christmas._

            _Santana Lopez_ and _8 others_ like this.

 

*

 

After missing Thanksgiving the previous month, Gwen knows there’s absolutely no way her mother would let her skip on Christmas as well -- so she packs a bag and bids college goodbye and makes the trip back to Ohio, reveling in the way her mom opens the door with a stained shirt and wrinkled forehead, and brightens up immediately upon seeing her daughter.

It’s a surprise visit -- she purposely ignored the texts asking whether or not she’d make it -- and it’s winter, and the holiday season is looming above their heads, so there’s really nothing planned for her to do. McKinley is on break so there’s no one to visit, it’s snowing so there’s nowhere to go, and there are guests that will soon be coming in for the holidays, so her parents are busy cooking, and there’s no one to talk to. After yet another failed attempt at an actual conversation with her sister, Gwen gives in and turns to the basic solution -- the internet.

She’s alternating between two chats by the time her newsfeed refreshes itself, one with an old friend and one with a boy from school, but she loses interest in both the moment her eyes zero in on Kurt Hummel’s new post, or, really, the people he mentions in it.

Her eyes narrow as she rereads the line, once and twice and a third, wondering if she’s missing something or if Kurt mis-tagged. She knows Kurt’s father -- has seen him, several time, and also know he’s a congressman now -- and she’s not at all surprised to learn that he went to visit his son in New York. They’ve always seemed close, and from what she could gather, Burt Hummel supported his son through everything, so it shouldn’t change now that he moved out.

No, it’s the second person that confuses her -- or at least, the title he’s given.

If they were different people, if she didn’t know them, if she didn’t see them interact that night after Grease -- maybe she would have thought that they’re just one of those couple, whose break-up was mutual and painless and that they really did decide to stay friends, and not just say that as a cliché. But she does know, did see them -- and she can’t quite piece it together in her head, can’t quite wrap her mind around the fact that the two broken boys she saw that night, the ones who looked like they’ve been cut to their very core, could somehow find a way to continue being friends.

It doesn’t make sense, she thinks, and reads the line one more time as the memory or their pale faces from the previous month resurfaces, making her question herself and what she thought she’s seen.

Later that night, when Kurt posts a bright picture of his dinner table, obviously taken by his father, Gwen begins to lean towards the thought that perhaps she’s simply missing something. The table in the picture is beautifully set and everything on it looks delicious, but it’s the pair that is sitting in the end of it that catches her eye -- pressed close together like all that time ago, the shadow of their smiles indicating that even if they don’t seem as easily comfortable as they used to, they’re on the right track.

She gives up logic, after that night -- because she always knew that there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Kurt and Blaine, and even though she always thought that one of the only things she did know is how in love they are -- maybe, just maybe, she underestimated that as well.

 

*

 

The clock ticks a little past one in the morning when Gwen gets back to her empty dorm room, her heels held in hand and fighting back a beam.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and it’s hands-down the best she’s ever had -- as quirky as he is, Jordan is sweet and funny and smart, and she likes him so much that she can actually feel her heart beating without pressing a hand to her chest.

She drops the shoes on the floor and throws herself onto her bed, face pressing into her pillow.

She doesn’t move, for a long while. She just lies there, her breath slow and even as she listens to the noises of the room, the voices of the people walking outside in the hall, the creaking of wood at night.

She doesn’t move until her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she shakes her trance off and sits up, her legs curled beneath her as she reaches for it and opens the text message she got from Bradley.

 _mr schue and ms pillsbury finally got their shit together and planned to get hitched but she bailed - pics on fb_ , the text says, and Gwen blinks at it twice in the dark, reads it over again, and immediately reaches for her laptop in the nightstand’s drawer. It’s a bet that expired long ago, and she feels only a bit betrayed that they only decided to go through with it after she graduated -- but the promise of good gossip and _cold feet_ , of all things, are more than enough to convince Gwen that she needs to see what’s going on.

On Facebook, despite being friends with students who seem to be awake at all hours of the night, there are only a handful of people connected. There are a few stray statuses from people unrelated to McKinley, mostly about Valentine’s and with pictures of their loved ones, but the majority of her newsfeed are former and current Glee-club members -- because they’re all awake, apparently at the same place, and the cancelled wedding is the hot topic of the night.

She sees more pictures of the club that night than she did during her four years of high-school -- and they look good, she’d give them that, wearing fancy clothes and posing with their choir director before his bride-to-be fled the scene. But she’s looking for the gossip, and she finds it, too, on Santana Lopez’s and Noah Puckerman’s and Quinn Fabray’s pages, through their statuses and updates and funny comments.

It’s only when she scrolls far enough to see Kurt’s last update that she pauses, momentarily forgetting about what she was looking for. He stopped posting at about midnight, but the recent activity on his profile makes her stop and take her finger off the pad, hovering above it.

There are several pictures, through Santana’s cellphone and Mike Chang’s camera -- in the first one he’s standing over a table of food, his arm looped through Blaine’s, in the second he’s laughing with Blaine at his side, and in the third, he’s wrapped in a tight embrace in Blaine’s arms, slow-dancing with their eyes closed and their faces content.

She checks, just to be sure. His relationship info still says he’s single.

The status she saw on the newsfeed is the last thing he posted -- _nothing like a failed wedding outing with the best friend to get you through the weekend --_ and maybe it’s the snarky wording or the fact that he tagged Blaine or the pictures she just looked at, but Gwen stares at the sentence for a long moment, her eyebrow raised in a silent mocking of his phrasing, before she clicks the internet closed.

She may not be an expert on relationship, and she’s definitely not an expert on _Kurt Hummel’s_ relationships, but she knows one thing for certain. Best friends don’t hold each other as if everything precious in the world is held in their arms.

 

*

 

 _Kurt Hummel_ is in a relationship with _Blaine Anderson_.

            _Sam Evans_ , _Tina Cohen-Chang_ , _Rachel Berry_ and _37 others_ like this.

            _View all 27 comments_.

 

*

 

It’s late at night nearing the end of May when Gwen gets the text message from her sister, her phone thrown somewhere inside her bag and her bag thrown somewhere between the piles of books on the table. She’s sitting in the library, and she’s not alone, per se, but those who are there are those who share her situation -- well into the finals season, and too afraid to lose focus to interact with anyone but dusty textbooks.

She hasn’t spoken to anyone but her roommate and her study-group in two and a half weeks -- because both she and her friends have tests to worry about -- which is why the buzz of her cellphone startles her, catches her off guard.

She throws one hasty look over her shoulder to make sure she hasn’t interrupted anyone and reaches for her phone, mentally raising an eyebrow when she sees the sender is her sister.

It’s a video, three minutes long and captured with the words, _it took three hours to find someone who videoed it and an hour to upload it, but it’s so worth it_ , and Gwen has no idea what to expect when she puts one earbud in and presses play.

It’s a musical performance at McKinley, she realizes within seconds; it was taken by someone who was standing on the stairs above the courtyard, through the bars, but everything is still visible -- a marching-band and two singers in bright clothes -- and she begins to wonder why her sister would send her something like this when neither of them has interest in Glee-club when she notices -- it’s Kurt and Blaine.

Kurt and Blaine, in cheerful, complementary-colored clothes and hip sunglasses, dancing around the courtyard in what is obviously a planned choreography to the sound of the Beatles.

She doesn’t know if she should be surprised or impressed. She’s neither, to be honest -- she’s seen it all, from the club’s _Push It_ in sophomore year to the triggering of the food-fight in the beginning of senior year. She’s no longer amazed by anything those kids do, and getting the marching-band to cooperate with their duet seems easy in comparison to other performances she’s witnessed or heard of.

The song’s drawing to an end and Gwen considers pausing it, but something stops her before she does. Her sister won’t send her a random performance of Glee-club, even if it’s just Kurt and Blaine -- she’s convinced no one even knows she’s been sort of keeping track of their relationship, and so her sister has no reason to send her this specific song unless there’s something special about it.

For a brief moment she wonders if maybe something terrible happens to the boys in the finishing seconds. Maybe someone throws something at them, or knocks them off the picnic tables, or soaks them in buckets of slushy -- but by the end, she’s relived to discover that they were not humiliated in any way. They’re clutching on to each other, standing tall and proud in each other’s arms high on top of a table, kissing like there’s no one else in the world but them.

The video ends and Gwen does the most logical thing that comes to her mind; she opens the internet tab and waits until her Facebook page loads, not bothering to check messages or notifications before she thumbs down Kurt Hummel’s profile, taking her finger off the screen when she sees the words.

Not all that is broken is lost, she muses with the poetic phrasing that only the open literature book in front of her could cause, and then she throws her phone back in her bag and returns to lyrics and rhymes and metaphors. Everything is back to its place, and she still has a final test just around the corner to study for.

 

*

 

 _Kurt Hummel_ is engaged to _Blaine Anderson_.

            _Rachel Berry_ , _Sam Evans_ , _Burt Hummel_ , _Finn Hudson_ and _46 others_ like this.

            _View all 78 comments_.

 

*

 

“They’re fucking engaged,” her sister announces in a voice that sounds vaguely proud at holding such an important piece of information, and Gwen can hear her mother scolding, “ _Language!_ ” in a muffled voice, clearly standing behind  her.

“Stop stealing the phone when I’m talking to mom,” Gwen says, tiredly, because she just finished a test that was too long and it’s too late and she’s too exhausted to really care, and it’s not like her mom had anything of true significance to tell her, or she would have done it within the first seconds of their conversation. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about, so if it’s not _really_ life-changing, spare me.”

“Blaine Anderson and his boyfriend,” her sister informs her, completely ignoring Gwen to the surprise of no one at all. “It was a big spectacular thing and he got the Glee-club and a bunch of other choir losers to attend and it was a musical performance -- well, duh -- and they’re like, _eighteen_ , but the boyfriend said yes.”

“Kurt Hummel,” Gwen says faintly, throwing her jacket on the floor and dropping onto her bed, head leaning into the wall and eyes closing, her sister’s voice through the phone the only thing keeping her awake. She’s not sure if what she said is a statement or a question, but she says it nonetheless, pronouncing the name into the air of the room just so that it’d be there.

“Yeah, that’s the guy,” her sister confirms. “I would’ve sent you a vid’, but it wasn’t at McKinley, so. I bet it was super huge -- you’ve seen how melodramatic they are.”

Gwen hums, pulling her legs up onto the bed and stretching them absently. “Didn’t they get together, like, two days ago?”

“Yup. Don’t ask me, I think it’s real stupid -- but hey, they made it so far, so who knows. They might actually get married and live happily ever after and shit.”

To the sound of her mom’s repeated protests and her sister’s exasperated, “Hold on, Gwen -- _mom, I’m almost sixteen, I can_ curse,” Gwen balances the phone between her shoulder and her cheek and leans forward, pulling her laptop out of her bag. She’s not sure why, to be honest -- if her sister made the effort to call her what she’s saying is probably true, and it’s not like it’s of any importance to her either way. But after thinking back to all the times she’s seen Kurt and Blaine’s relationship shift over Facebook, it feels -- right, in a way. Like closing a circle.

Her mom and sister are still bickering on the other side of the line when Gwen finds Kurt’s status, stating as clear as the day -- engaged, and to Blaine, and as happy about it as he could, if his replies to his friends are any indication.

There’s a moment, a short one, when Gwen thinks back to the day she saw the friend notice, and the time she’s seen them in Breadstix, and in the Lima Bean, and at school. She’s witnessed merely a fraction of their relationship each time, seen nothing but a splash of color in the big picture -- but there’s something sweet about looking at the evidence of their victory, the unshakeable documentation of the fact that they made it, and knowing what it’s all about.

“They will,” she says into the phone, and she can hear her mom in the background, but can also hear her sister mutter, “What?” into the phone, her voice confused and obviously lacking the context.

“Get married and live happily ever after and all that. I’m no psychic, but… I’m pretty sure they will.”

Her sister says nothing, but Gwen isn’t focused on her as it is. She’s staring at the top of Kurt’s page, where there’s a picture of him and his fiancé, cheeks pressed to each other and toothy smiles as bright as the sun, staring at the shiny ring circling Kurt’s finger proudly.


End file.
